Violent crime in Atlanta on consistent decline, police chief reports

ATLANTA - The numbers are in for the final quarter of the year, and it appears violent crime is continuing to decline in the City of Atlanta.

Homicides are down while crimes like shoplifting and larceny are up.

"Hey bro, hands where I can see them," an Atlanta police officer radioed. "Hands where I can see them. Sit down. Sarg, back in the church parking lot."

The detective found two car burglary suspects hiding near a church dumpster in SE Atlanta. Just a few minutes later police discovered suspected stolen firearms. All of them were loaded.

"Here it is, three of them," the officer observed.

Police Chief Darin Schierbaum tells the City Council's Public Safety Committee the numbers are improving.

"We are seeing an 8-percent reduction in crimes against persons across our city and a 5-percent reduction in property crimes," Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum explained.

Car thefts are also surprisingly down. The chief believes the department's distribution of anti-theft clubs led to that.

"There was not a single time I stood before last year and could report crimes being down, related to vehicle thefts, madame Chair and the members of the committee, but they are currently down 25-percent, and I want to thank the officers of the department, our investigators and community members," the chief said.

All zones show a downward trend in crime, with the exception of Zone 1 in northwest Atlanta and Zone 5 in downtown, which are slightly up.

Finally, the chief says homicides, which are looked to as the biggest indicator of safety, are once again down.

"We continue to see a noticeable reduction. In 2021 and '22, there had been 145 homicides in our city. This time last year we had 122 and 109 when this report was generated," the top cop said.

The one violent crime that is up is rape.

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The chief is still looking at ways to bring that statistic down.